Part of an ongoing artistic research project called the The Art of War, Jan Peter Hammer’s new video The Dig looks at the looting and illegal trading of cultural artifacts in northwest Bulgaria. Populated since Paleolithic times, the region has been in a state of permanent economic malaise since the collapse of socialism. The Soviet-era steel plants have gone to ruin, the factories are vacant. Near a deserted military spaceport, recent excavations pepper the ancient burial mounds, dug in search of artifacts to feed the European market’s voracious hunger for antiques. Jan Peter Hammer visits the site of a Chalcolithic settlement, the Telish archaeological site, one of whose 6,500-year-old artifacts might represent an alien spaceship. Here it becomes clear: the future is either communist or there is no future at all – just a protracted or magnified present, which drags on, plagued by power differentials, exploitation, and militarism. Past artifacts look modern, futuristic, alien even, because our anemic imagination can no longer fathom collective history. The screening is followed by a discussion between the filmmaker Jan Peter Hammer and art historian SUSANNE LEEB.

The artist and filmmaker Jan Peter Hammer (*1970 in Kirchheim unter Teck) lives and works in Berlin. His works have been shown internationally, including The Beast and the Sovereign at MACBA, Barcelona & Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2015); Toys Redux – On Play and Critique at Migros Museum, Zurich; Athens Biennale (2013); Without Reality There Is No Utopia at CAAC – Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Sevilla (2011).